Sleeping Arrangements
by its-amagicalplace
Summary: Future headcanon. Several months after Hydra have been taken down, and S.H.I.E.L.D is beginning to return to its former glory, Coulson & May attend a party at Stark Tower. May gets drunk and ends up spending the night on Coulson's sofa with him. Coulson reminisces the old times, back before New York, Bahrain and Hydra.


Coulson woke around sunrise.

It took him a moment to figure out where he was, but as he glanced around the room everything came flooding back to him. He was on the couch in his office on the Bus. Last night the team had been to a party at Stark Tower – Tony's birthday. They had only been able to attend as their most recent mission came to an end earlier in the day, and it had made a nice change to spending every night locked up on a plane.

He looked down to the side of him, and saw May. She was curled up on the sofa alongside him, her back leaning against his chest. She was gently breathing, and he knew from the sound – or lack of it - that she was still asleep. He realised he had his arm draped around her waist and wondered about removing it, but he didn't want to wake her. Not just yet. He was comfy, and warm, and for the moment, he was happy.

Her hair was flowing around her shoulders just below his face, and in it he could smell a tangled mix of perfume and smoke. May didn't usually smoke, but he knew once she'd been drinking she could be known to have the occasional cigarette, and Hill was never the best influence anyway. Maria had always been the one to get a party going, and she used to drag May along whenever she could – whether May wanted to or not. He smiled to himself. Back in the day, May would often have been one of the first onto the dance-floor, not afraid to make a fool of herself with her friends. Nowadays she spent a lot of time alone. Last night though he had seen hints of the old May coming through – as she laughed at the bar, as she reluctantly danced with Pepper and Maria, and as he'd had to half carry her back to the Bus and try and get her to climb the spiralled staircase to her bunk. Those stairs could often be tricky even when sober, and so after several failed attempts at getting her up them, and a lot of drunken giggling on her behalf, he'd ended up leaving the stairs, and letting her sleep on the couch in his office instead. He hadn't planned on sleeping on there too, but the sofa was comfortable and she'd asked him to stay, and so he had. So here they were, spooning on his couch like teenagers, without a care in the world.

Back before New York, and before everything that had happened in Bahrain, this was how they used to sleep all the time during their missions. Every night when they'd return to base, they would share the same bed, more for convenience really, and they always slept as they were now. It had been a long time since they had done so however. Bahrain had changed all that. It had changed May. And then following his death in New York, nothing had ever been as it were between them. May had shut herself down, locked everybody out. She didn't laugh or joke as she had used to, nor was she as welcoming and tactile with people. She never even hugged anyone anymore. Some of the team now thought she was _cold_, but he knew better; he knew that underneath it all, she was just trying to save herself from further pain, and further suffering. Coulson had an idea what she had been through out there, but she had never told him the full details. He didn't ask either. That was one of the things he had learnt over the years – if she wanted to talk about something, she would. Otherwise she kept things compartmentalised in her mind, and got on with her job.

He felt her stir slightly, and he was pulled out of his thoughts. He held his breath – he almost didn't want her to wake so soon – but she simply snuggled closer into him.

If any of the team walked into the office now, he thought, they'd assume something had happened between the two of them after the party. But it hadn't. In fact, the truth was, him and May had never been romantically involved with one another. Okay, so they had had sex a couple of times many years ago, out in the field, but they had always agreed they were one-time things that had followed emotionally-charged missions. The general consensus within S.H.I.E.L.D was that it was easier and safer to not get involved with a fellow agent, and they had both accepted that. But he wondered now, what would have happened if he had ever told her how he truly felt, whether things would have been different. He could never deny he hadn't fantasised about the two of them, about whether they could work together and be able to sustain a relationship in the field. Would she have returned his feelings, or would she have rejected him. And if they had got together, how would that have impacted their lives now? Would they have lasted through it all? Through Bahrain, New York, the Hydra invasion? He wasn't sure.

All Coulson knew though was that they had been there for each other through everything, and it meant so much to him that even now, after all those years, she still wanted to be on his team…

* * *

"So, this is just like old times eh?" May's voice roused him from the doze he had fallen back into. He hadn't realised she had woken, and wondered vaguely how long she had actually been conscious.

"I guess so, yeah" Coulson replied softly.

Neither of them made any attempt to remove themselves from the positions they were in on the sofa; they simply returned to silence for a bit, and the silence was comfortable. Based on the lack of noise in general, Coulson didn't think anybody else on the Bus was up yet anyway.

"How are you feeling?" he eventually asked. He knew hangovers used to hit her pretty bad.

"Like I've taken several hits with an ICEr to my head, you?"

He grinned again despite what she'd said - some things didn't change. "Yeah, I'm okay…clearly I still handle my drink better than you."

He could almost hear her rolling her eyes at him.

"Clearly you are incapable of letting that go" she sighed, but Coulson could tell she was smiling.


End file.
